131–140 of 155 posts
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Mentioning Kessler syndrome, especially in the case of Starlink LEO satellites, is the classic midwit signal.
What makes you think they are talking about Starlink satellites? The 1 million satellites in the article are data center satellites.
I don't buy the opposition to orbital datacenters. I think that's just the perfect being the enemy of the good, which (sadly) is very common in environmental activism. Let's assume two premises: 1. Demand for AI compute will continue to grow for the next 10 years. 2. The cost of orbital datacenters will approach the cost of terrestrial datacenters (in $ per token terms). If you don't buy either of these two premises…
The opposition is from people who have a brain and like to use it. And dont engage on Musk next cheap trick to sustain his chimerical stock valuations. A 100 MW datacenter in vacuum takes from you "put a man on the Moon" to "lets host Kubernetes on the Sun" :-))
Just to start, a 100 MW datacenter is a 100 MW toaster. On Earth, the waste heat would go into into air or water. In orbit, it can only leave by radiation. So you need a massive radiator area, plus pumps, coolant loops, structure, pointing, redundancy, and micrometeorite protection...
Then you need radiation hardened GPUs, DRAM, SSDs, optics, and power electronics and those are not going to magically become space rated because the pitch deck has a Mars picture on it. Also on earth datacenters these parts constantly fail. There was even some recent study of about 20% of GPUs failing within 3 years, and humans constantly have to replace them. In orbit, you would have space mission to swap the bad PSU...
If you make the calculations, at normal electronics temperatures, rejecting the amount of heat needs a radiator field on the order of 500 m x 500 m under ideal assumptions... Then you neede power, and that has the same scale problem. Meaning you need an enormous solar farm, but wait...what about the scenario of a eclipse? For 30 minutes without sunlight you need about 50 MWh of storage.
Musk is a moron, and this video of him explaining it as simply radiative is proof number 256 you can be an idiot, and a billionaire. And shame on Jensen Huang for not calling him out: https://youtu.be/trgn7s5-YHc?t=140
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As long as those satellites are in a self-clearing orbit (below about 300 miles of altitude), Kessler is not a concern.
I like that “not being able to use space for 25 years or more” is not a concern.
Starlink has been so successful, it is facing a lot of competition in the next few years. Every major power wants their own, national starlink network. China's state-backed starlink competitor GuoWang is putting 13,000 satellites in orbit by 2030. They've already started launching satellites. China's Qianfan plans 15,000 satellites by 2030. AST SpaceMobile is building their own network. Amazon Leo plans for 3,000 sat…
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I checked the publicly released stats over Starship's development, and this is what I found: compared with the initial ~5,000 t / ~73.5 MN concept, the latest V3-class Starship/Super Heavy is trending toward roughly 35%+ more loaded propellant mass and about 40% more maximum liftoff thrust if you use the FAA’s ~103 MN figure. Payload capability has also moved upward from the early 100+ t reusable LEO baseline to Spac…
Pretty sure they mean that Starship is not working reliably yet
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ISS is not comparable, we don't have to keep GPUs in human-habitable temp ranges, and radiation speed goes way up with increased temps.
The difference in cooling rate between 290K and 370K isn't as large as you think.
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Pretty sure they mean that Starship is not working reliably yet
Starship has never met claimed specs and capabilities. It is so far behind schedule that it won't meet specs in time to remain relevant. Which is a generous way of saying it never will.
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It would be a hell of a lot easier than placing one in space. Much less thousands of them. Remember that one satellite doesn't represent a data center, it represents maybe 0.1% of a data center.
In theory it "should" be much easier to build on earth, but in some ways it's just different challenges. On earth you're forced to deal with those pesky government things and in the Sahara not a lot of them are exactly reliable or good-faith actors. Then there's night time. So out of the gate, you're dealing with needing massive power storage for the night time. So you invest $5b into a solar farm and data center out…
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You don’t think there might be a better solution than having a dozen or more companies all launching thousands of satellites which all perform the same function?
Is there one organization you trust to run the space internet for everyone on earth?
The people who want to put data centers in orbit must be either much smarter than me, or much dumber than me, because I just don't get how that makes any technical or economic sense. Of course, it's possible nobody actually wants to do this, they just want to get funded to do it. (Old joke: "I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant...")
Starcloud
Axiom Space
SpaceX (Starlink orbital data center constellation)
Google (Project Suncatcher)
Lonestar Data Holdings
Blue Origin (TeraWave/Project Sunrise)
Aetherflux (Galactic Brain)
Kepler Communications
Sophia Space
Madari Space
Adaspace / ADA Space / Guoxing Aerospace (China)
Orbital (LA-based AI inference constellation)
Atomic-6
Planet Labs (with Google)
Crusoe (partnership with Starcloud)
Edge Aerospace
Rotonium
Lux Aeterna
Star Catcher
Loft Orbital
Cowboy Space
OrbitsEdge
Galaxia (Canada)
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC)
Beijing Orbital Twilight / Orbital Chenguang
Astro-Future Institute
Space Compass (NTT + SKY Perfect JSAT JV, with JAXA support)
NASA + HPE (Spaceborne Computer)
European Union / ESA / ASCEND (Thales Alenia Space, Airbus, ArianeGroup, HPE, Orange)
UNOOSA (with Madari Space)
Canada’s Department of National Defence (with Galaxia)